The path was wide and well trodden, deep grooves set into the dried ground where wheels had dug deeply in for centuries. The fields on both sides were ripe and ready for harvest but the relatively chilly air seemed to be keeping anyone from coming to harvest it just yet. The chill had pushed past the fabric of her clothes, into her skin.

But Ji Ying's bones were amber.

And she could not feel the cold.

"Uh, what are these?" Bo had stopped to point out to a field slightly sunken into the ground. The dirt of the field was sludge, and sticking out of it by only a finger's length were small thin stalks topped with small thin dark seeds, their thin outer-covering splitting to show something black within.

"Hell rice." Rui Yifu answered.

"What."

Ji Ying sighed, making sure that it was as loud as possible as she picked up speed in her stroll to move past the two men. Liu Xie and Zhu'er were only a few steps ahead unfortunately, and simply walking away at high speed to the town would have been a little too rude.

"It's a black rice variety that grows here in the North. It's not like the white or brown rice varieties, since it needs long periods of cold to properly grow. When I lived here, it was used exclusively for offerings to ancestors or to give to pilgrims going beyond the Silent Mountains," Rui Yifu explained. "But I've been told a new recipe developed two hundred years ago that involves making a savory bun filling."

Ji Ying took a few more larger steps, practically hopping up beside Liu Xie and Zhu'er. "Hey!" She said, clasping her hands together behind her back as she bent down and forward slightly to look at Zhu'er's face. The little girl's face was in a slight frown and her eyes were focused on the ground. "Hey. Why so sad?"

"I miss Gege."

"Who?" It took Ji Ying a moment to remember that it was Li Bao-chu-whatever. "Oh, him. I'm sure he's fine!" She said with a smile, trying to cheer up the girl. "Would you like to hear a story instead?"

Liu Xie's gaze turned upon Ji Ying, "what story do you want to tell her?"

"A nice one," Ji Ying said. Without waiting for anyone's permission she launched into one. "So a very long time ago, when the Ancient Dynasty was still Young, there was an empress who had a very well liked maid. The maid had been picked up from a small village and chosen specifically for her humble personality and loyalty. She served dutifully and quietly, and was always well treated by the empress and emperor."

"Oh, I know this one," Liu Xie said.

"Of course you do," Ji Ying snorted. "Let me finish," she looked at Zhu'er who was watching her with mild interest. "So the empress and the emperor had been given the recipe to make immortality soups because of some great deed the emperor did, and were going to eat it. But as it was being prepared, one of the advisors of the emperor poisoned it with the blood of a nine headed ghost pheasant!"

Zhu'er's eyes widened.

"The maid had witnessed this and ran to stop the soups from being delivered. By the time she reached them, the bowls were already on the table. But the empress and emperor were not there yet. The evil advisor was though, and he forced her to drink the soups or he would tell the empress and emperor that she was the one trying to poison them," Ji Ying continued, relishing the lurid details of the story in her mind. She was selecting her words carefully however, there were things she could not say and other things that probably would have been a bit beyond the little girl's understanding. "By the time the empress and emperor came in, all the soup was gone and the advisor pointed to the maid as being the thief! The maid begged for forgiveness."

"What happened?" Zhu'er prodded, still wide eyed.

"The two monarchs were very angry at her," Liu Xie spoke before Ji Ying could, and Ji Ying glared at him. He did not seem to care. Of course he did not care, she bitterly thought. She was just a servant after all. "She told them that the advisor had poisoned them, but the advisor asked them who they would believe. A loyal well educated man, or a peasant girl?"

"Did she get punished?"

"No, she started vomiting blood, lots of it. The advisor realized his plan was foiled and ran, while the Emperor and Empress tried to help the maid. The Emperor screamed for all his physicians and the Empress held the maid and begged her to hold on," Liu Xie continued. "But there was nothing anyone could do. The maid died."

Seeing Zhu'er's eyes beginning to water, Ji Ying jumped in with the next part of the story. "Because it was winter, and they were in the north, it was too cold to bury her. So instead they had a small tomb built for her, where she was laid out. Every night the two came to her tomb to pray for her and beg for her soul to be restful. Then, on a night with a full moon, she sat up."

"She was okay? She got better?" Zhu'er seemed to relax a little.

"Yes," Ji Ying nodded. She glanced ahead of them, the walls of the town were getting closer, and they were approaching the long shadow of the great mountains. "She sat up, as though for a dream, and politely asked for some water. Overjoyed, the Empress went to go draw some water for the maid, and the Emperor personally carried her outside to a bench to enjoy fresh air. The Empress came back with a cup of water, and gave it to the maid. The maid drank it, and then she began to float upwards!" She said, gesturing to the sky. "Because she had vomited out all her blood and organs but had eaten both of the immortality soups, her body rejected mortal water and caused her to float!" Or that was what Ji Ying remembered. Liu Xie's thick brows were raised but he said nothing.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

"What?" Zhu'er's own brows furrowed. "She flew away?"

"No, she just floated upwards. The Empress and Emperor tried holding her hands to keep her from floating away, but she slipped out of their grasp. Then she went to the moon and lives there nowadays."

Zhu'er looked back at Liu Xie, "is this real?"

"Mostly," he replied. "Maybe one day we'll meet Lady Cai and her husband."

"Oh yeah, she married the rabbit god, I forgot that part," Ji Ying shrugged. The dark shadows had enveloped them and Ji Ying looked upwards to the town's tall walls. Its gate was open, but only enough to allow maybe two people in at once. Which was strange, she thought it would have its gate open far wider to accommodate visitors and other farmers coming in.

The more she thought about it, the more she realized how odd things were. She was no expert in commerce or daily living patterns of real people but she felt that it was odd there was no one going in or out of the town. She glanced back at Rui Yifu and Bo. Bo was strolling quickly to catch up with them while Rui Yifu lingered behind, somehow producing a fan to hold in his hands as his eyes narrowed in thought.

Liu Xie walked through the gates first, and Ji Ying followed after him. She had been expecting dead people but instead found the town quite full. People were going about their day, perhaps a little tensely, and street hawkers went up and down the roads with their single-wheeled stalls, yelling at the top of their lungs. Dogs barked in the street while children raced around. The buildings were all made of stone, which was odd but given that trees for building seemed to be in singularly short supply it made some sense. They were all well made though, single floor handsome buildings, some even had paintings on their side, one proudly proclaiming it the work of 'Master Fang Suyin' who lived on Fifth Street, Third Ward. Interestingly there were people in armor, she could see some people in lamellar armor with blue scarves and scuffed boots, while there were others in cheaper looking poorly dyed orange leather armor. Once the group was fully inside the town it seemed like two people abruptly emerged from the crowd. One was an older man, with a light grey and pepper coloring to his hair, but well maintained facial hair. His lamellar armor was a little more grand looking, with a carefully made design of a sturdy looking tortoise on his breast. The other was a woman in the same kind of cheap leather armor as some others had. She was missing an eye and it looked like at some points rats had tried chewing her fingers off.

"Turn back travelers," the older man said. "I don't know how you managed to make it all the way over here, but madness is beginning to grip these lands."

"We're going beyond the Silent Mountains, things are much worse there I think," Liu Xie said.

The older man looked doubtful, and his eyes fell upon the child in their group and his mouth changed into a deep disapproving frown. "The madness is leaking into the Silent Mountains."

"Into?" Liu Xie repeated back. "What do you mean?"

"It's a long story," the woman replied. "We're remnants from the armies of the two princes of the Western Kingdom. My name is Spear-Breaker, and that one there is Shen Guang. Their war is over, but their armies are still moving."

Ji Ying chewed on her lip. That sounded rather unfortunate.

"Who won?" Liu Xie asked, politely.

"Neither," Shen Guang shook his head. "The princes killed each other, but their bodies did not stop moving. I was actually a captain in one of their armies, and she was the leader of one of the slave battalions that the other brother had." The man's face then began to pale. "As soon as the bodies began getting back up, I took what was left of my men and we fled northwards."

"I did as well," the woman added. "We ended up meeting together and chose to continue on as a group. Our fallen followed us for a week until we broke through into the north, and then we finally ended up making our way here."

Rui Yifu stepped forward and Ji Ying slinked backwards, watching the two soldiers eyes bulge at the fish person. "Oh don't look at me like that, I'm just an old shark," Rui Yifu sneered, "but I want to ask you, you said your fallen got back up right? Did you notice anything peculiar? A strong floral scent?"

Shen Guang shifted forward a little, so that Spear-Breaker stood behind him. "Well, yes actually. Early in the war, a fortune telling woman had been supplying my prince, and I suspect the other prince, with medicine made of seed paste. I don't eat anything I don't prepare myself, so I never partook. My men largely follow in my steps in that regard, so few of them ate it as well."

"My brothers and sisters only had food on the road, some were desperate to scrounge around. I lost less to that... that thing that happens," Spear-Breaker shuddered, "but many still died in battle as we fled, some because they were already wounded, others to give the rest of us time to escape." She closed her eyes. Ji Ying could barely imagine the scene. The battlefield must have been a molasses of blood, guts, flesh, and broken weaponry. When madness was at its peak, it found a new height. Flesh soldiers, puppets, whatever one might call them. There were many ways to make them, after all.

"In truth, neither of us shall stop you if you still want to go past the mountains," Shen Guang said. "But know this. When we came to this town, shortly afterwards a crawling army's worth of bodies came by. They did not come directly into town, instead they set towards one of the abandoned paths into the mountains. But after their passing, we found large white flowers growing in their path."

"We burned them all," Spear-Breaker continued. "Nothing grew back, but merchants came to visit and one of them carried those flowers and seeds as well. When we demanded he give up his goods to be destroyed, he went mad and attacked us."

"...He was infected too, wasn't he?" Rui Yifu muttered.

"If that's what you want to call it," Shen Guang confirmed with a dreary tone. "He was killed in self defense, but his body kept moving. So we burnt his body too."

Ji Ying scratched her chin, the mortals were surprisingly bright. It was more than she could say about Liu Xie, at least. She looked over at Zhu'er, who was concentrating very hard to follow the words it seemed. "Zhu'er, would you like me to buy you a snack?" She asked.

"Is... is something bad happening?" She looked at Ji Ying.

"No, nothing bad at all," Ji Ying lied. "Liu Xie, let me carry her, I think I saw someone selling hawthorns."

Liu Xie held Zhu'er still, not looking at Ji Ying. Zhu'er pushed against him slightly, "I want to get down," she grumbled.

He finally relented and set her down on the ground gently, "alright. Bo, go with them."

"Huh?" Bo blinked and looked over at Ji Ying and Zhu'er.

"Why?" Ji Ying asked, feeling a spark of anger in her chest. How was she supposed to get Zhu'er away with a dog tagging along? "If we walk around together, someone might get the wrong idea and think we're a couple."

Bo nodded, "yeah boss I don't want people thinking I'm married to a pig."

Ji Ying's spark of anger swelled into fury, "say that again to my face, you-"

"I like Bo," Zhu'er said, tugging on Ji Ying's hand. The anger deflated.

Ji Ying crossed her arms and held them tight to her chest, "fine, I guess!"